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Linda Greenhouse
Not How He Wanted to Be Remembered

Two decades passed before the ghosts of the Rosenbergs came back to haunt Irving Kaufman, the judge who sentenced them to death.

Ingrid D. Rowland
The Divine Guido

A new exhibition at the Prado dispels the idea that Guido Reni was an academic painter, revealing instead a tireless innovator.

Ed Vulliamy
Reclaiming Native Identity in California

The genocide of Native Americans was nowhere more methodically savage than in California. A new state initiative seeks to reckon with this history.

A Poem by Álvaro de Campos

a poem by
Fernando Pessoa

Ah, how refreshing it is when we
fail to do our duty!
It’s like being in the countryside!
Unreliability becomes a refuge!
I breathe more easily now that I’ve
missed all my appointments.
Yes, I missed them all, with the
deliberateness of neglect…

Free from the Archives

In Annonay, France, on June 4, 1783—240 years ago today—brothers Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier made the first public demonstration of their new invention: the hot air balloon. In the Review’s November 10, 1983, issue, the historian J. H. Plumb wrote about the Montgolfier brothers, the early days of aviation, and a time when, “so long as one belonged to the petty bourgeoisie or higher, and could read,” to be young “was indeed very heaven.”

J. H. Plumb
Very Heaven

“Man for the first time had conquered the third element—the air. At such a time it really was a joy to be alive.”